battles are the acute diseases of nations, and that their
tendency is to exhaust, by their violence, the vital energies of
the countries where they occur. That England may be spared the
spasms, cramps, and frenzy-fits now contorting the Continent, and
threatening Ireland, I earnestly pray. With the French and Irish
I have no sympathy. With the Germans and Italians I think the
case is different; as different as the love of freedom is from
the lust for license."

Her birthday came round. She wrote to the friend whose birthday
was within a week of hers; wrote the accustomed letter; but,
reading it with our knowledge of what she had done, we perceive
the difference between her thoughts and what they were a year or
two ago, when she said "I have done nothing." There must have
been a modest consciousness of having "done something" present in
her mind, as she wrote this year:--

"I am now thirty-two. Youth is gone--gone,--and will never come
back: can't help it. . . . It seems to me, that sorrow must come
some time to everybody, and those who scarcely taste it in their
youth, often have a more brimming and bitter cup to drain in
after life; whereas, those who exhaust the dregs early, who drink
the lees before the wine, may reasonably hope for more palatable
draughts to succeed."

The authorship of "Jane Eyre" was as yet a close secret in the
Bronte family; not even this friend, who was all but a sister
knew more about it than the rest of the world. She might
conjecture, it is true, both from her knowledge of previous
habits, and from the suspicious fact of the proofs having been